The HeartFelt Fund is Officially Launched

All projects related to the San Isidro Integrated School are now officially under the umbrella of the Park City Foundation.
 (See www.theparkcityfoundation.org)

Good news! Your donations of $250 or more are now eligible for tax-deductible receipts.

The Park City Foundation will oversee and manage all incoming funds and outgoing expenses for the HeartFelt Fund.

Anyone wishing to make a monetary donation, please make your check payable to:

Park City Foundation - HeartFelt Fund

Checks may be mailed to:

Park City Foundation - HeartFelt Fund

P.O. Box 681499

Park City, UT  84068

Questions regarding the Foundation may be directed to:

Trisha Worthington, Executive Director

(435) 214-2146

Questions regarding the HeartFelt Fund may be directed to:
Theresa Felt, Director
(801) 915-1335

Shipment Sets Sail!

Last Sunday my friend Delene and I drove 800 miles from Park City, UT to San Jose, CA.

The next day we met Tom Felt's truck, heavily loaded with donations bound for San Isidro, at ACE Warehouse in Hayward.

Delene Scrafford and Odette Mabalatan at ACE Warehouse

Rhett (the driver), Odette (our shipping specialist), and four missionaries from the local mission office of the LDS Church converged in the late afternoon to unload the donations.

While Elders Watson, Wilde, Fairbanks & Fahina unload, Odette & I pause for a photo.

After unloading the trailer and truck bed, these missionaries helped us repack donations into approved shipping cartons.

Elder Read and Elder Chiu relieved the first crew of volunteers and worked very hard over the next couple of hours repacking donations.

By 8:00pm exhaustion set in, so we made arrangements to continue the job on Tuesday morning. Delene's friend Sheldon Teranishi arrived and, with the help of Epie and his friends, we managed to have everything packed by noon.

Sheldon Teranishi (at left) helps load books and computers into shipping cartons

At last, 61 cartons and 24 computer monitors are ready to ship. Within 3 weeks, all donations will have set sail on the Pacific Ocean bound for the Philippines.

Soon the children of San Isidro will have many new books to enjoy and, for the first time ever, have access to computers at school!

Ready to ship!

I cannot begin to express sufficient appreciation to the many generous people who donated time, muscle, vehicles, books, and computers to this wonderful cause.

I especially want to thank Tom Felt for providing transportation of the donations from Utah to California and Odette Mabalatan for donating free shipping from California to Manila.

We welcome any monetary donations to help alleviate the cost of nearly $3000 to ship these books and computers from Manila to the school in San Isidro.

If you would like to help, please contact me at theresafelt@gmail.com. Thank you!

READY TO SHIP

We recently received a 3rd large donation of books by the Twin Peaks Elementary School in Holladay, Utah.

Principal Tracy Rose presenting us with new textbooks

Alycia Bradshaw, a teacher at Twin Peaks, connected us with the school Principal, Tracy Rose.

They supplied us with more than 600 textbooks for the children of San Isidro. Subjects include Reading, Math, Music and Art.

The well-cared-for books
are in nearly new condition.

Ryan Cleland and Ryan Thompson
volunteered to load all 36 boxes of
heavy textbooks onto a truck that soon
headed to California for shipping.

Tom Felt generously donated the use of his truck and trailer to collect all recent donations from the three Utah schools and deliver all the books and computers to a warehouse near San Francisco, CA.

Tom and three members of his Maakoa team (Semisi, Nate and Rhett) packed up the trailer. In this photo, the truck is ready to leave for California. Rhett (at right) is driving the load to San Francisco for shipping.

Rhett and Nate load boxes

The team wraps computer monitors in bubble wrap for safer transport

GENEROUS DONATIONS!

This past week the North Elementary School in Cedar City, Utah donated an entire reading program, math textbooks and loads of reading books to be shipped to Bohol for the San Isidro school children... 55 boxes in all!

The teachers and custodians pitched in to load the boxes into a U-Haul truck which I drove to Park City last Wednesday.


A Big Thank You to the Cedar City school team for donating books and loading the truck.

Also warm thanks to Sean Stamper of Park City's Mountain Timber Furnishings for unloading and stacking all the boxes into my garage.

* * * * * 

On Friday we received a second truckload from a very generous anonymous donor which gave us 110 boxes of textbooks, encyclopedias, reference books and library books, as well as 20 Dell computers!!

A Big Thank You to Cole Adams and his mom Lori who connected me with the donors.

Special thanks to Cole Adams and Jacob Covey for loading the books and computers onto the rental truck.

Jacob Covey and Cole Adams loading computer monitors

And many thanks to Charles Eaton, his right-hand man Dan, and the Anchor Storage Warehouse for storing the large supply of books and computers while awaiting arrangements to have them shipped to the Philippines.

Charles Eaton, manager of Anchor Storage, 

provided temporary shelter for donations

prior to shipping.

Dan wrapping book boxes for temporary storage

Forklift moving computers into the warehouse

I'll keep you posted on all progress!

NEW SCHOOL SUPPLIES DELIVERED

The HeartFelt organization is pleased to announce the arrival of new school supplies, desks, textbooks and reading books to benefit each of the school children of San Isidro!


On the first day of school in June, each student received a packet of school supplies:

Fr. Raffy and Glenny presented the teachers with dictionaries, inflatable globes, and other classroom essentials:

A new Grade 7 classroom opened in June. Each student has a new desk and a personal packet of supplies:

Our shipment of 13 large cartons filled with textbooks and reading books arrived in May. They were loaded onto a truck and delivered to the school in San Isidro:

Now each classroom has a new "mini-library" for the teachers and children to enjoy:

     New textbooks

We also gave each teacher a gift certificate to buy additional classroom items from the National Bookstore:

Step by step our dreams are becoming a reality!

TRIP to BOHOL a HUGE SUCCESS

Elizabeth Weiss, of Trailside Elementary School in Park City, and I visited the

San Isidro Primary School in late March-early April.

Along with Father Raffy De Gracia and his sister Glenny Hallmark, we met with school officials and teachers to discuss current needs and future plans.



Meet Father Raffy De Gracia who oversees our projects at San Isidro...

Here he is taking charge of the planning meeting.







These are some of the exciting things accomplished during our trip:

1. We purchased school supplies and prepared individual packets to be presented to each student on the first day of school this June.

THANK YOU to the Current Issues Class of CANYON VIEW HIGH SCHOOL in Cedar City, Utah for hosting a dance and raising over $300 to purchase these supplies!





2. We purchased visual aids, dictionaries, inflatable globes, log books, and other supplies for teachers to use in their classrooms.







(New teacher log books)








Here are the supplies being loaded onto a jet boat to be transported from Cebu to Bohol, the island where San Isidro is located:

3. We ordered 35 new desks to be placed in a Grade 7 classroom currently being built. This sample is partially stained to show the quality of construction.









Village members contributed building materials and labor to construct the classroom.





4. We contributed a 14" Sony color TV as "Grand Prize" for the school's raffle to raise funds for adding a roof to the new classroom.


Raffle tickets are selling for 5 pesos each (less than 10 cents).

First prize is a large sack of rice.






5. We bought new textbooks for the teachers to use as reference materials for teaching Social Studies and the Filipino language, printed in Tagalog.




This is is typical of the condition of most of the textbooks currently in use.

MEET the TEACHERS

Head Teacher: Emma L. Guibay

(Responsible for overseeing 4 primary schools)

Kindergarten:

Jean R. Reserva












Grade 1:

Lea D. Anosa

Grade 2:

Michelle Lopez:

[ Not Pictured ]

Grades 3 & 4:

Elvie Lopez Josol


















Grade 5:

Darla Mae Celades

Grade 6:

Johnber M. Misador

Grade 7:

Alma Lamoste

Grade 8:

Julian Enad

Day Care Worker:

Anamie Matunhay

[ Not pictured ]

These dedicated teachers work with the children five days a week from 7:30 a.m. until 5:00 p.m.

Often they draw upon their own small incomes to provide visual aids and instructional materials for their classrooms.

Each teacher and administrator will donate a percentage of their monthly income in order to pay the salary of the new Grade 7 teachers.

* * * * *

I have never before witnessed such pride, devotion and community spirit as is evident among the teachers, administrators, parents and students of San Isidro:

• Here, women and children dropped by Glenny's home to help us sort school supplies into individual packets.

• These are a couple of posters created and displayed as guidelines for students in the classroom:

CURRENT PLANS

• SUPPLY TEXTBOOKS

We hope to collect and ship many more textbooks since math, reading, and science instruction is in English.

• FUND an ADOPT-a-DESK PROGRAM

These new desks cost only $20 each.

For about the price of two movie tickets, you can provide a new desk for a child in the San Isidro Integrated School.

This is what you will be replacing:

• BUILD a LIBRARY

(These are some of the only reading materials

currently available to students.)

• CREATE a COMPUTER LAB

(We hope to find businesses willing to donate
discontinued computers.)

• ESTABLISH a SISTER SCHOOL RELATIONSHIP with U.S. SCHOOLS

Trailside Elementary School
Park City, Utah
(where Elizabeth Weiss teaches ESL)

FUTURE PLANS

• IMPROVE the PLAYGROUND

Remove rocks from the play area

Construct new playground equipment

Rebuild this circular tree-bench

• ADD NEW CLASSROOMS

Four classrooms are insufficient for six grades

Space is available to build two additional classrooms

• BUILD a NURSERY/KINDERGARTEN

It's our dream to one day build a separate structure for Pre-School children with their own play area.

There is enough land.... All we need are the funds.

A single classroom can be built for around $2000.

DREAM BIG
AND OUR BEST DREAMS WILL COME TRUE!

This message just arrived from Father Raffy dated April 30, 2010:

Dear Theresa,

I am happy too for the devotion and commitment of your family to have that big dream of the village school in San Isidro. It will make a difference in the lives and the future of the students. The pledges, gifts, donations from all over the States, especially from your friends, make us feel so important for the common vision and mission to have the Library, school buildings, the chairs, school supplies and others that will enhance the dignity of the person in terms of their knowledge. Therefore, I am thanking you for your big help.

Love and prayers,

Fr. Raffy